Texturing and height problems

[hutten]

Hello,

Texturing affects height (apparently), and height changes affect texture. I talk about the 5m grid.
I have some assets that go underground, think of a cellar wall, and the grid cannot accommodate such a steep descent. I have therefore constructed assets with some "ground" around it. I then try to make a nice transition between that piece of ground and the textured terrain. It leads to all kinds of shadow-like artifacts at the transition.
When I use the height brush (which I still find too sensitive) at the edge of such scenery objects, sometimes holes are created. These appears as dark areas, like shadows. Often they can be cured by retexturing.
On the other hand, when I apply a ground texture, the height is or appears to be affected. This happens for instance at the transition between road surface and surrounding area, when they are almost at the same level.
Retexturing the ground can be a remedy, but often problem just moves to a nearby grid square.
Furthermore I find that lowering a grid point can cause a nearby point to suddenly jump a little bit. Or the other way around...

Regards.
Paul

Edit: it concerns the 5m grid, not the 10m one

 

[JCitron]

This effect is caused by PBR textures due to PBR textures having a height component to them.

 

[hutten]

Thanks John,

That could be it, but... the ground texture I use is of the classical type, it is of my own making. They do not have a parameter file, but they include a normal-texture (and have the tag trainz-build 4.5).
Maybe that is enough to explain the effect?

Regards,
Paul

Edit: I removed the normal-texture from my texture asset. It solved the problem.
But I saw that applying it to the terrain where it replaced the default PBR texture, caused some unexpectedly strong height changes! I wonder if the software is correct...

 

[JCitron]

You're welcome, Paul.

That is an interesting issue and I'm not sure if it's a bug or not report this to the QA Team and see what they have to say.

The grid texture is actually a PBR texture now and it could be that your non-PBR texture without the normal map is now putting the lightest texture at the maximum strength changing the height to the highest point that the lightest colors indicate in the program. Heights are controlled in 3d terrain by 0 to 256 levels of grey with zero height being black and white being the highest point.

 

[Sebo007]

Hello,

Texturing affects height (apparently), and height changes affect texture. I talk about the 5m grid.
I have some assets that go underground, think of a cellar wall, and the grid cannot accommodate such a steep descent. I have therefore constructed assets with some "ground" around it. I then try to make a nice transition between that piece of ground and the textured terrain. It leads to all kinds of shadow-like artifacts at the transition.
When I use the height brush (which I still find too sensitive) at the edge of such scenery objects, sometimes holes are created. These appears as dark areas, like shadows. Often they can be cured by retexturing.
On the other hand, when I apply a ground texture, the height is or appears to be affected. This happens for instance at the transition between road surface and surrounding area, when they are almost at the same level.
Retexturing the ground can be a remedy, but often problem just moves to a nearby grid square.
Furthermore I find that lowering a grid point can cause a nearby point to suddenly jump a little bit. Or the other way around...

Regards.
Paul

Edit: it concerns the 5m grid, not the 10m one

Try to paint PBR textures with the same scale and angle. Have you tried it?

 

[stagecoach]

When creating assets it is best to create the asset with extra depth, that goes below the 0 line. The asset will then have the extra depth to hide any gaps below it created by PBR textures.

 

[hutten]

Thanks for the reactions.
I tried to adapt the Trainz terrain to the texture of a piece of ground attached to an asset. So I cannot really "match" PBR-textures.
I did have the edges of the asset going below the ground level (at an angle), but that did not prevent the holes/shadows from appearing.
I am fine with a classic texture in my case.

Regards
Paul